Thomas Lovell Beddoes
|birth_place = Clifton, Bristol |death_date = January |death_place = Basel, Switzerland |nationality = English |occupation = physician, poet, dramatist }} '''Thomas Lovell Beddoes' (June 30, 1803 – January 26, 1849) was an English poet, dramatist and physician. Life Born in Clifton, Bristol, England, he was the son of Dr. Thomas Beddoes, a friend of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Anna, sister of Maria Edgeworth. He was educated at Charterhouse and Pembroke College, Oxford. He published in 1821 The Improvisatore, which he afterwards endeavoured to suppress. His next venture was The Bride's Tragedy (1822), a blank verse drama that was published and well reviewed, and won for him the friendship of Barry Cornwall. Beddoes' work shows a constant preoccupation with death. In 1824, he went to Göttingen to study medicine, motivated by his hope of discovering physical evidence of a human spirit which survives the death of the body.Donner 1950, pp. xxxvi-xxxvii. He was expelled, and then went to Würzburg to complete his training. He then wandered about practising his profession, and expounding democratic theories which got him into trouble. He was deported from Bavaria in 1833, and had to leave Zürich, where he had settled, in 1840. He continued to write, but published nothing. He led an itinerant life after leaving Switzerland, returning to England only in 1846, before going back to Germany. He became increasingly disturbed, and committed suicide by poison at Basel, in 1849, at the age of 45. For some time before his death, he had been engaged on a drama, Death's Jest Book, which was published in 1850 with a memoir by his friend, T. F. Kelsall. His Collected Poems were published in 1851. Critics have faulted Beddoes as a dramatist. According to Arthur Symons, "of really dramatic power he had nothing. He could neither conceive a coherent plot, nor develop a credible situation."Donner 1950, p. lxxix. His plots are convoluted, and such was his obsession with the questions posed by death that his characters lack individuation; they all struggle with the same ideas that vexed Beddoes.Donner 1950, pp. xxxii–xxxiii. But his poetry is full of thought and richness of diction, and for this Lytton Strachey referred to him as "the last Elizabethan".Donner 1950, p. xi. Some of his short pieces, e.g.: "If there were dreams to sell," (Dream-Pedlary) and "If thou wilt ease thine heart," (Death's Jest-Book, Act II) are masterpieces of intense feeling exquisitely expressed. Recognition Three of his poems ("Wolfram's Dirge", "Dream-Pedlary", and "Song") were included in the Oxford Book of English Verse 1250-1900."Alphabetical list of authors: Addison, Joseph to Brome, Alexander. Arthur Quiller-Couch, editor, Oxford Book of English Verse 1250-1900 (Oxford, UK: Clarendon, 1919). Bartleby.com, Web, May 15, 2012. See also * List of British poets References Bibliography * Donner, H.W., ed. The Works of Thomas Lovell Beddoes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1935). * Donner, H.W., ed. Plays and Poems of Thomas Lovell Beddoes (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd., 1950). * * Ute Berns and Michael Bradshaw (eds), The Ashgate Research Companion to Thomas Lovell Beddoes (Aldershot, Ashgate, 2007) (The Nineteenth Century Series). Notes External links ;Poems * [http://www.bartleby.com/101/index2a.html Thomas Lovell Beddoes in the Oxford Book of English Verse 1250-1900] - 3 poems ("Wolfram's Dirge", "Dream-Pedlary", and "Song"). * Selected Poetry of Thomas Lovell Beddoes (1803-1849) (3 poems) at Representative Poetry Online. * Thomas Lovell Beddoes at PoemHunter. ;About * Beddoes, Thomas Lovell, The Literary Gothic. ;Etc. * Thomas Lovell Beddoes Society website * Doomsday: Journal of the Thomas Lovell Beddoes Society Category:English poets Category:People from Bristol Category:Suicides by poison Category:Poets who committed suicide Category:1803 births Category:1849 deaths Category:People with bipolar disorder Category:Suicides in Switzerland Category:English dramatists and playwrights Category:English medical doctors Category:19th-century poets Category:Poets Category:English-language poets